A billion people in the world have hypertension, and without intervention it will be 1.5 billion by 2025. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that hypertension is the major global […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Joe Biden, 47th vice-president of the US, calls for global cooperation to defeat cancer
Famously if you are giving a speech what you say is less important than how you say it, which in turn is less important than who you are. So a […]
Richard Smith: A professional writer observes death up close
Arthur Koestler’s Dialogue with Death is an unusual, even unique, book in that it’s the experience of a professional writer who expects at any moment to be shot. It provides […]
Richard Smith: Improving the evaluation and regulation of medical devices
Earlier this month the Scottish government ordered an immediate halt to the use of vaginal mesh after mesh had contributed to a woman’s death in Edinburgh in August. The death followed […]
Richard Smith: What to do with the £20 billion promised to the NHS?
Under great political pressure and caught up in the razzmatazz surrounding the NHS’s 70th birthday, the government has promised another £20 billion to the NHS. What should be done with […]
Richard Smith: A small insight into avoiding some of the pressure on A&E departments
At 8.15 on a Saturday morning while I’m shopping with my grandson my wife at home receives a call to say my 89 year old mother with dementia, who lives […]
Richard Smith: Ten years of working towards patients controlling their own health records
I first met Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, founder and chief executive of Patients Know Best, ten years ago and heard his idea that all patients should have access to and control of […]
Richard Smith: What I learnt from brief encounters with a GP whose obituary I’ve just read
I find that at age 66 the obituary pages of The BMJ usually include each week at least one person I’ve known. Often the obituaries bring back memories, some exciting […]
Richard Smith: A baby dies of measles
I had measles as a child. My brothers had measles. Everybody, as I remember, had measles as a child in Rotherhithe in the 1950s. But I don’t remember anybody dying, […]
Richard Smith: Modern doctors should pay more attention to lovesickness
In this book The Incurable Romantic: and Other Unsettling Revelations Frank Tallis, a psychotherapist proposes that modern psychotherapists and doctors can learn from the ancients about the disabling conditions of […]